Deep Purple/ Turning To Crime

BY NARENDRA KUSNUR 

Deep Purple/ Turning To Crime

Label: Edel Music

Genre: Rock covers

Rating: ****

On the 11th track of Deep Purple's new album Turning To Crime, you hear an all-too familiar opening riff. Though you're aware that this set is filled with covers, the choice of Cream's 'White Room' comes as a surprise, specially heard in Ian Gillan's voice. Guitarist Steve Morse avoids Eric Clapton's famous wah-wah coda but uses his own style.

Covers seem to be the order of the day - besides Larkin Poe and Govt Mule, even Robert Plant and Alison Krauss have focused on this format in their new album Raising The Roof. Though Purple played Joe South's 'Hush', the Beatles hit 'Help' and the Jimi Hendrix-popularised 'Hey Joe' in their debut album, their covers have largely been restricted to concert jams.

Produced by the great Bob Ezrin, Turning To Crime is their first album of all-covers, and they begin appropriately with '7 and 7 Is' by Arthur Lee's Love, one of the popular groups when Purple made its debut in 1968. From good old rock n' roll and boogie-woogie piano runs to blues-tinged beauties and southern rock, Purple switches styles comfortably.

The line-up is the same which played in Mumbai in 2002, with keyboardist Don Airey, bassist Roger Glover and drummer Ian Paice joining Gillan and Morse. And though most songs are pivoted around Gillan's brill-Ian-ce and Morse's axe-llence, it's Airey who comes up with some remarkable parts, specially on Little Feat's 'Dixie Chicken' and Louis Jordan's 'Let The Good Times Roll'. Likewise, the Morse portions on Mitch Ryder's 'Jenny Take A Ride!' are first-rate.

There are some surprises too, like the take on Bob Dylan's 'Watching The River Flow' (imagine Purple attempting Dylan) or the sudden inclusion of a few 'Smoke On The Water' notes on Huey 'Piano' Smith's 'Rocking Pneumonia And The Boogie-Woogie Flu'. Gillan is immensely likeable on his take of the Peter Green-penned 'Oh Well', the Yardbirds song 'Shapes Of Things', Jimmy Driftwood's 'The Battle Of New Orleans' and Bob Seger's 'Lucifer'. At 76, he sounds remarkably in shape.

The album concludes with 'Caught In The Acts', a mostly-instrumental medley that includes excerpts from Led Zeppelin's 'Dazed And Confused' and a vocal rendition of Spencer Davis Group's 'Gimme Some Loving'. If all the musicians display marvellous consistency, Ezrin does a great job putting it up together.

This is the British band's second album after lockdown, after last year's all-original Whoosh! Longevity, surely, comes in fascinating shades of deep purple.




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